Politicians: Where do we get these people?

Camille Paglia is someone I disagree with at times but have always found to be, for the most part, refreshingly honest. I like to read her thoughts on current affairs (don’t really care much about the cultural side of it all) and this week, in an interview in Salon, she answered a couple of questions that I think are worth discussing.

Question one:

Two words: Anthony Weiner. Your thoughts?

Two words: pathetic dork. How sickeningly debased our politics have become that this jabbering cartoon weasel could be taken seriously for a second as a candidate for mayor of New York. But beyond that, I have been amazed by the almost total absence of psychological critique in news analyses of the silly Weiner saga. For heaven’s sake, Weiner is no randy stud with a sophisticated sex life that we need to respect. The compulsion to exhibit and boast about one’s penis is embarrassingly infantile — the obvious residue of some squalid family psychodrama in childhood that is now being replayed in public.

I assumed at first that Huma Abedin stayed married to Weiner out of noble concern for her unborn child, who deserved a father. But her subsequent behavior as Weiner’s defender and enabler has made me lose respect for her. The Weiners should be permanently bundled off to the luxe Elba of Oscar de la Renta’s villa in the Dominican Republic. I’m sure that Hillary (Huma’s capo) can arrange that.

Her first point is the most important – how debased have our politics have become? Look at the circus we deal with on a seeming daily basis. Look at the people we attract. And consider the fact that Anthony Weiner actually figured he had a legitimate shot at being elected.

Look at this idiot mayor in San Diego. He just can’t imagine why he should shuffle off the stage. There are any number of others that need to take the hint as well.

It’s not just a problem on the left. It is a problem on both sides of the isle. As we have said many times here, we are extraordinarily ill served by our political class today… at all levels and from both parties. And it is we who we have to blame for that problem. The fact that Weiner was indeed taken seriously until his latest nonsense was revealed is the point. Elliot Spitzer is another example. The fact that neither demonstrated any character or integrity previously should tell us we don’t need them anywhere near public office. Yet somehow they get signals that they have a chance at a second try. What those signals are I haven’t a clue, but whatever they are, we need to quit sending them pronto.

Question two:

Any hopes, fears or predictions for the presidential elections in 2016?

As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s. A governor with executive experience would be ideal. It’s time to put my baby-boom generation out to pasture! We’ve had our day and managed to muck up a hell of a lot. It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts.

I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi. In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately. The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was.

Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. It’s even a key motif in “King Lear.” As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?” Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood. The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve — and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win.

She nails Hillary and Benghazi on the head. I couldn’t agree any more with her assessment of that particular situation and the response from Clinton and the administration.

Note too that Paglia’s candidate isn’t another senator. She too has had enough of that brand of clueless fools that have no executive experience (although Clinton can claim exec experience with the Dept. of State, as far as I’m concerned she made a dog’s breakfast of her time there). Hopefully the rest of the country is just as tired of it as Paglia is.

I think there is a conspiracy among late-night talk show hosts to help idiots get elected so they can make fun of them! If it hadn’t come out that Weiner had kept texting after leaving office, he probably would have become mayor! I feel so sorry for Hillary being linked to another sexual pervert! ( Since folks like Peashooter, Guppy, and Rugs will know, this is SARCASM!)

Elliot Spitzer and Schlongshow Weiner? New York politicians. Is there a surprise here? Been that way since before the Civil War, Dan Sickles, the man largely responsible for Central Park, Tammany Hall alumni, serial philanderer, the first man to use the insanity defense for shooting a man who was getting cozy with Sickle’s wife (see, he did have some standards about wives). New York is like Chicago, they elect and keep electing people that the rest of the country is jaded enough to think are possibly bad people. Big city folks is smart, they KNOW people are corrupt, and so long as they’re not too corrupt, too often, right out in plain sight where everyone can SEE them being corrupt, well, let it go, you know? Wink wink. Those rubes in flyover country, they ain’t got Broadway! Hicks. New Yorkers and Chicagoans don’t even try to makes excuses for this. They know the rest of are are just too stooooopid to understand.
No discernible standards owing to the Democratic party motto….”Hey man, whatever!”. Bill Clinton serially molested women? NOT A PROBLEM no outraged husband or boyfriend showed up on the back stairs of a hotel in East Haysouse Arkansas to ventilate his vest, so it’s okay (Dan Sickles, paging Danial Sickles….). Weiner flashed his package at girls via the internet? His wife stayed with him, none of our business, he resigned his job, he’s suffered, good candidate for mayor no?
Mayor Bob Filner (Mayor? patterns?) ….formerly Congresscritter Bob Filner, the Paw in my Schlock and Paw campaign plan for 2016.
Elliot Spitzer..didn’t he have a TV news show or was it some reality show about prostitutes?
Having no standards to start with except VICTORY and then crushing your opponents, it’s crazy to suddenly start holding these people to a standard isn’t it? That’s one way we get these guys.

Republicans? Ask a Republican whether they prefer dogs over cats, if they prefer dogs then ask them why they hate cats? They probably want to kill them too. Why do Republicans want to come to your house and take your cat and have it put to death!! RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR KIDS!!!!!!!! Why are they telling you your kids need to hold the cat down while they blow it’s brains out! We gotta stop these rich white-male cat hating Christians (had to include the hypen, didn’t want you to think they were rich white male-cat hating Christians, they hate ALL cats, especially your sweet little kitten Pookey, YOUR cat. That’s right, I’m talking to YOU!!!!!)!

And then there are Republicans eager to grab the torches the Democrats brought to burn down the house. They want to be co-operative so the Media and Democrats will like them and maybe let them keep their jobs if they, uh, just set fire to the front porch themselves. Like ‘needs-to-shut-up-and-retire’ idiot John McCain and half the things he’s said in the last month. Or Rubio with his amnesty pitch…we should do it because Obama is just going to go around us and do it himself. It’s like saying you should rob the bank before the bank robbers do, because, they’re gonna do it anyway man. But you know., “he’s the Republican candidate, so…I HAVE to vote for him”.
I call this the Republican ultra secret campaign victory plan. That’s how we get these guys.

Slippery slope? Bah! crazy talk. What our favorites do in private is their business you homopobic racist rich white cat murderin bastard (shoot….I played that completely out of order….it’s rich white cat murdering homophobic bastard RACIST…). And if they DID do something sorta kinda that looked wrong but wasn’t chances are the other guys were, uh, more wronger, and….I think Kim Khardasian is about to have her baby, did you see her purse, what? scandals? I mean, what scandals, I don’t watch the news (the President obviously doesn’t either, so just shut up).

They get in because collective we suffers from the notion that we don’t have to WATCH what they’re up to, locally, nationally and sometimes internationally. It’s like we think some magic thing will happen the day we NEED to know something, and we’ll watch then; you know like the day guys committing workplace violence flew planes into the WTC.
Too much effort to keep track, it’ll all work out.
We’re watching…Honey Boo Boo. That’s how we keep getting these guys.